05 March 2014

Flip-flopping on tenure for UTRGV

When the new Texas university was announced, which we now know will be University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, the first thing I remember our Dean saying was something along the lines of, “Faculty will keep their jobs.”

Today, the University of Texas at Brownsville student paper is reporting that may not be the case.

Bobbette Morgan... asked lawyers at the UT System “if tenure at UTB and UTPA means tenure at UT-RGV” and was told “no.” ...

“Legally, that is a true statement, but the intention here is to grow the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley into one of the larger universities,” Cigarroa said.

I myself am not worried about me, personally. My department is short of faculty as it is. But it is disconcerting to say the least to have heard one thing a little over a year ago, and another now. I think this question and concern is more relevant to University of Texas at Brownsville, where there have been multiple legal cases of the institution trying to dismiss tenured faculty.

Additional, 9 April 2014: In an email to faculty, advisor Julio Leon wrote (my emphasis):

In the coming weeks we will share specific processes for how UTB and
UTPA tenured and tenure-track faculty may choose to transition to
faculty positions at UTRGV.